Locking the closet

Young people who are facing hatred and violence turn to the Internet to look for help and support

By Kevin O’Flynn / The guardian, Moscow

Make love, not bad laws.

Photo: AFP

Only one person knew that Svetlana was gay when she wrote to Deti-404, a Russian support group for lesbian teenagers. In her letter, the 16-year-old described a life of hiding her sexuality in a small town in central Russia where a man had been killed for being a homosexual. “I am scared that they will find out about me and lynch me. Sometimes I want to cry out: ‘Accept me for who I am! Or at least be tolerant of me,’” she wrote.

Deti-404, which takes its name from the error page that appears when a Web site does not exist, was set up by Lena Klimova, 25, after she wrote an article about the plight of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) teenagers. She had no plans to do anything further, but then she got a letter from Nadya, 15. “Nadya was hounded at school, her mother didn’t support her,” said Klimova. “She decided to die, accidentally read my article and didn’t do it.”

After Klimova had spoken to Nadya by telephone and understood the depths of her despair, she asked herself: “Why does nobody ring alarm bells, not scream, not shout about it on every corner?”

“Many of them close in on themselves, they don’t tell anyone. They are scared of parents and classmates,” she added. “If they open up, parents sometimes beat them, insult them, throw them out, take away their phones, ban them from going on the Internet and even lock them up in a psychiatric clinic.”

The small support group is one of the few for young gay people in Russia. It would also seem to be exactly the thing that the controversial anti-gay law passed by the Russian parliament wishes to crack down on. The law bans the dissemination of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual orientation” towards under-18s and imposes fines on anyone convicted.

The legislation has caused an outcry in the west, leading British actor and writer Stephen Fry to compare the situation of gays and lesbians in Russia to that of Jews in Nazi Germany. In an open letter to British prime minister, David Cameron, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Fry called for the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi next year to be taken away from Russia. But the prime minister, in a Twitter reply, said he thought prejudice was better challenged by attending the games rather than a boycott. Last week the IOC obtained assurances from the Kremlin that competing athletes would not be affected by the law. But for Russia’s LGBT community, the latest move has simply ratcheted up the pressure still further.

When she set up the group, Klimova surveyed 115 LGBT teenagers all over Russia, creating a closed forum for the teens to interact. Her survey showed that a number had thought of suicide. Fewer than half had come out to their parents. “It is only on the internet that they can find somebody to speak to,” she said. “The feeling that most of these children feel is constant fear.”

A number of the teens’ letters are shown on the Deti-404 page, with pictures of the authors with their faces with black stripes on them so no one can recognize them. When a teenager gets in touch, if needed Klimova helps them speak to a sensitive psychologist. “I tell practically all of them that they are needed, unique and invaluable. I am not pretending. It is true,” she said.

Teenagers in smaller towns — where there is unlikely to be a gay scene or few, if any, openly out people — have it the hardest. “Our school is considered progressive, but it is quite normal for teachers to say that homosexuals will burn in hell,” wrote one 16-year-old from a small town “which isn’t even on the map”.